Abstract
It is argued that some mathematical skills may be directly linked to learning programming language constructs. It is also argued that problem-solving through programming demands solid foundation in algorithms, and thus should be taught as if it were a process of learning mathematics. An analysis is given showing how mathematical maturity may impact learning programming language constructs. Conclusions are made based on the analysis.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, Joel and Frens, Jeremy. (2003) Object centered design for Java: teaching OOD in CS-1. In Proceedings of the 24th SIGCSE Technical Symposium, 273–277.
Dale, Nell. (2004) CS1 Course Content Survey, available at www.cs.utexas.edu(ndale(ContentResults2.html
Gibbons, Jeremy. Structured Programming in Java, available at www.ulst.ac.uk(cticomp(gibbons.html
Hu, Chenglie. (2005) Dataless objects considered harmful, Commun ACM, 48 (2), Feb. 2005
Jackson, Michael A. (1975) Principles of Program Design, Academic Press, New York.
Kambayashi, Yasushi and Ledgard, Henry F. (2004) The separation principles: A programming paradigm, IEEE Software, March/April, 78–87.
Legard, Henry F. (2001) The emperor with no clothes. Commun ACM, 44(10)
Pea, R. D. (1986) Language-independent conceptual “bugs” in novice programming. Journal of Educational Computing Resaerch, 2(1)
Wegner, Peter and Goldin, Dina. (2003) Computing beyond turing machines. Commun ACM, 46(3)
Westfall, R. (2001) Hello, world considered harmful. Commun. ACM, 44(1)
Winslow, L. (1996) Programming Pedagogy—a psychological overview, SIGCSE Bulletin, 28(3), 17–22
Zeng, Nanshan and Schach, Stephen R. Is the Object-Oriented Paradigm Appropriate for Scientific Software? (Pre-print)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hu, C. It's Mathematical, After All—the Nature of Learning Computer Programming. Educ Inf Technol 11, 83–92 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-005-5714-4
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-005-5714-4